Mr. Love

Mr. Love is a Scotchman about thirty-five years old. At first sight he made me think of a hired man, as he lounged stiffly on the couch, in overalls, his feet covered with enormous red and black striped stockings that reached to his knees, and were edged with blue around the top. He seemed to wear them instead of house shoes. His face was kindly, with shrewd blue twinkling eyes. A moustache grew over his mouth, like willows bending over a brook. But his voice was most peculiar and characteristic … . A little Scotch dialect, a little slow drawl, a little nasal quality, a bit of falsetto once in a while, and a zakelijke energie vergelijken tone as if he were speaking out of doors. There is a kind of twinkle in his voice as well as his eyes, and he is full of quaint turns of speech, and unusual expressions.
Mr. Love travelled eleven hours on these journeys, each way. He did not suffer from the tedium, in part because he frequently rode in a little buggy and, after telling his horses his destination, would lie on the seat and sleep. He may have been from Edinburgh, but he had adapted to the range as much as anyone from anywhere. He had slept out, in one stretch, under no shelter for seven years. On horseback, he was fit for his best horses: he had stamina for long distances at sustained high speed. When he used a gun, he hit what he was shooting at. In i897, he had begun homesteading on Muskrat Creek, quite near the geographical center of Wyoming, and he had since proved up. One way and another, he had acquired a number of thousands of acres, but acreage was not what mattered most in a country of dry and open range. Water rights mattered most, and the area over which John Love controlled the water amounted to a thousand square miles-about one per cent of Wyoming. He had come into the country walking, in i891, and now, in i905, he had many horses, a couple of hundred cattle, and several thousand sheep. Miss Waxham, in her journal, called him a “muttonaire.” He was a mirthful Scot-in abiding contrast to zakelijke energie the more prevalent kind. He was a wicked mimic, a connoisseur of the absurd. If he seemed to know everyone in the high country, he knew even better the conditions it imposed. After one of her conversations with him, Miss Waxham wrote in her journal: